His Daughter
by mille libri
Summary: At first disappointed by the birth of another daughter, Pa comes to recognize parts of himself in Laura.


_Thank you all for reading! This is based on the books, but I imagine it fits the TV show as well._

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He would never have admitted it, but when his mother came out of the little cabin he had built to announce that his wife had borne him a second daughter, Charles Ingalls was disappointed. Not that he wasn't happy. Childbirth was frightening, and knowing that both his wife Caroline and his new baby girl were safe and well was a relief. But he already had a daughter, sweet pretty little Mary, and he had been hoping for a son. Someone who could help him outside the house eventually, someone he could teach to shoot and take out hunting. Someone who would share his itch to wander, which had him looking at the horizon every morning and wondering what lay beyond the trees of Wisconsin.

Of course, his first sight of baby Laura touched his heart and made him forget all about his disappointment, at least for a time. She was so tiny, with a fuzz of dark hair and blue, blue eyes that looked up into his with such wonder, as if she was capturing him in her memory, never to be forgotten.

As she grew, he realized how foolish he had been to think of all girl babies as being alike. Where Mary had been a quiet baby from the beginning, Laura made her feelings known loud and clear. Where Mary had been content to be left in her chair, quietly playing with blocks, Laura wriggled and fought to get down. She learned to walk far sooner than Mary had, her little feet taking her wherever her inquisitive nose wanted to go. She got herself into trouble all the time, tumbling down from places she had tried to climb onto, upsetting things her Ma had been trying to cook.

Caroline was at her wits end with the wild and willful little girl, so different from the careful Mary, who had been born ladylike. Mary's soft voice and eager willingness to do just what she was told suited Caroline's gentle nature beautifully. Laura, on the other hand, always wanted to know why, always wanted to be off to the next thing before she had finished the first, and her loud voice made her Ma wince.

But where Caroline found her second daughter difficult to manage, Charles found her increasingly delightful. He recognized the irrepressible spirit that wanted to know, wanted to go just that little bit farther and see what lay just out of sight. He had it, too, and had tamed it with difficulty—difficulty and the love of a good woman. So he helped Caroline tame Laura, as best he could, sympathizing with both, knowing that the world was a lot harder on a woman's curiosity and need to know than it was on a man's.

One spring day when Laura was about three, he was heading out to the barn to do the chores, and Caroline's stock of patience was being sorely tested by her headstrong child. "No, Laura, we do not spread out the firewood looking for the baby mice. There are no baby mice in the house. And if there were, the mother mouse would want her babies left alone." Then, a few moments later, "No, Laura, we do not leave our porridge in the firewood for the mother mouse." And a few moments later still, "No, Laura, we do not use our dress to wipe the porridge off the firewood."

Charles heard Caroline's deep sigh, a sure sign that her temper was reaching a breaking point. She was a gentle, mild woman, but two children and a husband and a house were a handful.

He ducked around the curtain that separated their bed from the rest of the cabin, and Caroline looked at him, her blue eyes wide, and shook her head. "It's nice that she's interested in the baby mice, if there were any, but everything she does just makes it worse."

Laura came running to him on her little bare feet, clinging to his boots, looking up at him. "Want to see the baby mice, Pa."

"Your Ma told you to leave the woodpile alone."

She blinked, looking confused, and he realized that Caroline hadn't actually told her to leave the woodpile alone—just not to spread out the wood.

"She meant to leave the woodpile alone," he explained.

Laura blinked again. "Oh." Pressing her head against his knee, she looked over at her mother. "I'm sorry."

Caroline sighed. "No harm done. I was going to have to wash your dress anyway."

Charles looked down at the little one leaning against his leg, and then up at his wife, who looked as if she just wanted a few minutes' peace and quiet to finish her chores, and he smiled at Mary, who was industriously wiping up her cup and saucer, intent on getting every last drop of water dry.

Then he picked Laura up in his arms. "You're so small, little one. You're like a half-pint of sweet cider, half-drunk up." And he poked her in the ribs. "How would you like to come out to the barn with your Pa and help feed the animals?"

Her blue eyes widened and shone with joy. "Me, Pa? Yes, Pa!" She patted her little hands together.

"All right with you, Caroline?"

"Yes, Charles, thank you," she said with heartfelt relief.

So he carried his little girl out with him into the sunshine, laughing as she turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes and giggled as the sun hit her face. Caroline would have told her to wear a sunbonnet if she'd had a moment to think, but Laura always fought her sunbonnets, pushing them back to hang by their strings around her neck the first moment she could.

In the barn, he set her down. "What first, Pa?"

He had to milk the cow, and that was no place for his little one. Sukey had been known to kick. "Why don't you go get that little pan over there, and I'll put some milk in it, and you can put it out for Black Susan and her kittens."

She hurried to do as he said, bringing back the pan and holding it steady while he squirted milk into it. Then, carefully, she carried the pan, spilling only a few drops, and set it down in the open space he indicated, watching as the kittens came sprawling out to drink. "Like that, Pa?"

"Just like that," he affirmed. Quickly he drew down the milk into the big milkpail. Then he had Laura select two good carrots for the horses while he pitched the dirty hay off the bottom of their stalls and put in some clean hay, lifting her up so she could feed the carrots to the horses when that task was done. Finally, he filled the boxes with oats while Laura chattered at him about the baby mice. She had made up a whole story about the baby mice who supposedly lived in the woodpile, and their life with their mother. It was, naturally, just like her life, only slightly altered to adjust for the different body of a mouse and its different capabilities—but it was inventive, and kept him entertained through the rest of the chores.

She kept interrupting herself to ask about the tools he was using, making him show her what they did and how they were used, and by the end of the choring, when he was walking back to the house with the milkpail in one hand and Laura's hand in the other, it occurred to Charles that nothing he had done this morning was any different than what he might have done with that mythical son he had dreamed of before Laura was born. He looked down at her little head, the brown hair just like his, bobbing along next to him, with a new sense of kinship. Laura wasn't just a daughter, she was _his_ daughter, with all his curiosity and his need to wander and longing to see just what lay over the horizon. Someday, maybe they would see the edge of that horizon together.


End file.
